"What the world lacks today is idealism, and when I say idealism I do not mean utopia, I mean law, justice, morality, ethics." That is how President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova addressed the members of the Council for Women's Entrepreneurship in Bitola, a body set up by the municipality. She went on, more sharply: "Every day they convince us of realpolitik, but the consequences are Darwinism." That, she said, is shameful for humanity, because sin is committed not only by acting but also by failing to act, by watching - and one day somebody will ask where you were while these things were happening.

The president spoke about wars, about disillusioned people who "go searching for happiness around the world", and about the need to give more room to cultural diplomacy - "more fruitful, stronger and more humane than the traditional kind". Peace and preventive diplomacy, she said, are better than the reactive sort. Not one of those sentences is contestable. The trouble with uncontestable sentences is that they often remain only sentences.

The local half of the event was more concrete. Mayor Toni Konjanovski, deputy mayor Marina Krstikj and council chair Bojan Bojkoski, a small fair inside a restaurant showing products made by women from the community, a message that knowledge and mutual support are the road to success. "Success is measured not only by what is achieved, but also by the way we inspire others," Konjanovski said.

The president is right: sin is committed by inaction too. That is a sentence every institution in this country could hang above its door - from a ministry to a municipal counter. For the women selling their products at a small fair in a restaurant, idealism is a fine subject for a meeting. A better subject would be: what exactly will the municipality and the state do for them once the photographs are taken?